Lead Magnets in Web Design:  Bergen County NJ Businesses Ready To Step Up Their Game

 An effective business website helps bring in more customers – bottom line.  With a branding that stands out and the right marketing messages that speak to their ideal customer, some business owners might be tempted to think the job of their website ends there. Unfortunately, as much as 70% of website visitors never return after leaving a site. If there is no means of obtaining the contact information for those visitors that match your ideal customers, you are losing out on potential business. These are called lead magnets.

Today the web design experts at TNTMAX in New Jersey are here with a complete guide to using lead magnets in your website to capture and convert first-time visitors into full-time customers.

So, if you do business in the Garden State, take note! It’s time to upgrade your website for the 2019 best practices, tips, and trends in web design.

Lead magnets improve the success of your web design – Bergen County, NJ businesses should make sure web design upgrades include them.

 

What is a lead magnet?

 

When we use the term lead magnet, we are referring to the first steps in attracting leads to convert them to paying customers through a nurturing process that requires excellent communication.  So, don’t let the heteronym fool you. We aren’t talking about lead the metal – which isn’t even magnetic, by the way. Don’t you just love the tricks of the English language?

 

We’re talking about leads. As in, leading customers to your business by way of a website with an offer so magnetic, they can’t refuse.

 

Call it a bribe if you must or bait, or an incentive where you give potential leads something valuable in exchange for their contact information. Depending on the industry, a phone number is essential, while most other businesses can make do with an email address. You will need a dedicated landing page on your website with a form for visitors/leads to fill in exchange for a gift they desire. Generally, more effort required to obtain the lead magnet indicates a higher level of interest.

 

Why Lead Magnets are Critical in Web Design for Bergen County NJ Businesses

 

To put it plainly, your website visitor is spoiled for choice. With so many businesses like yours online, your competitors aren’t just businesses in Bergen County, or even in New Jersey for that matter. Hundreds of businesses anywhere in the world compete online for the same leads and customers.

Thanks to the internet, the purchasing landscape is much more different today than generations ago. Today’s customers do their research and compare different alternatives before making a decision. You want web visitors to stop and pay attention to your brand and your products – to be magnetized by you and your offers.

 

What Makes a Lead Magnet Successful?

One concern business owners have of utilizing a free download as a lead magnet is that you may inadvertently attract browsers outside your target market. Also, people are protective of their privacy and often use incorrect contact details or dummy email addresses.

What is a business to do? Granted, a 100 % conversion is wishful thinking, but there are a few conditions a lead magnet must satisfy to live up to its name—to be irresistible to your ideal buyer. An effective lead magnet:

 

• Solves a real and pressing problem your ideal customer is facing.
• Makes a promise of a benefit your customer can achieve quickly.
• Addresses a specific topic. The more specific the issue, the better qualified your leads will be who are eager to access it.
• Is easy to consume. Lead magnets are notorious for collecting “dust” in download folders chiefly because they are overwhelming. Bite-sized and instantly-accessible work best.
• Should project a high value. Poorly created lead magnets give an impression that actual products will be of similar low quality. Furthermore, it should deliver what the landing page promises.
• Demonstrates your authority. When a free lead magnet solves your prospect’s problems, answers a lingering question, and saves them time or money, you become a credible option they can turn to for more significant problems.

 

Examples of Lead Magnets

Lead magnets can take many forms. Different industries prefer some formats over others because of the conversion rates they deliver. Nevertheless, business owners are encouraged to test new models in their market. If one type of offer is common in your industry, chances are your prospects have seen many of the same, and after a while, they’ll lose their magnetism.

Here are examples of lead magnets that businesses have used successfully in obtaining contact information to nurture prospects into customers.

 

1. Free samples, free trials, free memberships

 

Offering a free taste or -experience of a physical product or service to visitors in hopes they would want to buy more is Lead Generation 101. Lawyers provide free consultations, insurance companies give away free quotations and soap-makers offer free soap bars in exchange for a person’s details.

Free trials are the bedrock of customer acquisition for SaaS companies. Think 7 – 60-day free trials of CRM software, investment trading platforms, and many others. Free membership is a different model software companies also use where they offer free users some software functionality and lock the best features for premium customers. Cloud storage companies and graphic design software have used these successfully to amass customers.

 

2. Coupons, discounts, and launch promos

 

E-commerce stores selling fashion, nutritional supplements, or herbal tea, use discounts and coupons to capture a website visitor’s email. They are successful because people love finding a good deal on an item they were looking to buy. Remaining on a store’s mailing list is also advantageous for an existing customer if the store offers regular deals or incredible discounts on new launches.

 

3. Resource lists and checklists

 

A list of useful information that becomes a reference your prospect can refer to over and over makes for an excellent lead magnet. A food company offers a shopping list, an event planner provides a list of wedding vendors to prospective brides, a baby store offers a checklist of must-have items for new babies. These resources are irresistible because they save prospects time spent researching the information themselves.

In addition, these lead magnets help build authority—your business positions itself as the go-to place to get all market-related questions answered.

 

4. Calculator/options generator

 

If numbers are important in your market, a calculator is a perfect lead magnet, one that breaks down the results of a calculation and personalizes it for users. A calculator on a real estate website calculates mortgage payments and delivers further analysis on different options that could affect future payments to the visitor’s email. A decorator’s site requires email addresses for visitors to see selected designs in additional color options.

 

5. Reports, white papers, e-books, and gated articles

 

These are the lead magnets of choice for B2B businesses involving substantial one-off purchases or continuity products. Company personnel responsible for making purchasing decisions need to be convinced in every way possible before they would take any step. The objectives of lead magnets in this category include:

• discussing a specific topic comprehensively
• helping readers become aware of a problem that is impacting their business negatively
• helping readers understand an existing problem better
• analyzing different solutions available in the market for a specific challenge
• introducing a particular product as the best solution for a problem

 

In the hands of their target audience, these lead magnets build brand awareness, authority, credibility and showcase the expertise of the company responsible for creating them.

Reports: Stakeholders like to keep informed about what is working and what has changed in their fast-moving industry. These time-savers present useful data, statistics, and research discussing the state of industry and predictions about trends. Infographics are reports in a pictorial form and can also be useful lead magnets.

Whitepapers: Position a brand’s product or service as the best solution for a problem. A catalog detailing the product’s features and benefits is an excellent conclusion.

Ebooks: Discuss the length and breadth of a topic and are still popular in engineering and healthcare industries.

Gated articles: Niche magazines can feature a snippet of a popular blog post or article and reserve the rest for users who provide their email addresses.

 

6. Video tutorials

 

Videos are perfect where reading about a topic becomes too tedious that it loses effectiveness. A video tutorial can become a useful lead magnet if it teaches users how to perform a task that could save them money, time or their sanity. Educational-based products are a good application. For example, a job placement company uses a video demonstrating the common mistakes job seekers make during interviews as a lead magnet.

Another model is to make videos free and deliver the transcript, a worksheet, and other helpful aids to users who provide their email address.

 

7. Webinars

 

Webinars have taken the marketing world by storm because they can combine different elements of successful lead magnets in one tidy package: video, tutorial demonstration of a product, a report on the state of industry, analysis of different solutions in the market, and entertainment value.

Live webinars have an added quality that is extremely valuable: prospects can pose questions to a business representative, the owner even, and receive answers in real time—expert positioning at its finest. Plus, because live webinars take place at a specific time, there is a sense of urgency to get on the waiting list. Whereas, a prospect can choose to defer entering their details to download an ebook to a later date.

 

8. Email courses, video series or newsletters

For informational or educational based-businesses, a how-to e-book can be delivered as an email course to avoid overwhelming a prospect. Same goes for a video series educating a prospect on a topic that solves a problem they are having.

While many businesses use lead magnets to entice people to join their newsletter, for other businesses, the newsletters are lead magnets all on their own because they are so informative. An example is a financial newsletter promising prospects detailed analysis of market and economy news so they can profit.

 

9. Quizzes and surveys

 

These lead magnets are fun ways to get contact details of leads. You ask a series of questions with different answer choices. The aggregated results provide insights a prospect finds useful and will be delivered only after providing their email addresses. Quizzes and surveys are successful because we are naturally curious about how we compare to some average of people. A quiz on a hotel’s website invites visitors to find out “what kind of a traveler are you?”

Have these lead magnet examples inspired you to create one of your own, or do you think your website could benefit from an upgrade? TNTMAX can help, web design for Bergen County NJ businesses is one of the services we perform. Feel free to have a look at testimonials from previous web design clients.